Film, Archive, Data – New Urban Normalcies

A three-day programme of film screenings, talks & discussions at the SSAF Lab

Over the past few years, we are seeing a growing convergence between filmmaking and the mapping of a new urban experience. Survival in digital times has come to mean many things – how to record the present without getting trapped by it, how to navigate the myriad illegalities, small and large, that have come to define everyday life. Resistance in such times is often profoundly unheroic, mundane even, invoking longer histories resistant to the processes of generating the thick data that has become a by-product of existence itself. Over three days we have talks, screenings of films and presentation of archives that outline what we might call new urban normalcy.

— Ashish Rajadhyaksha

With

Arbab Ahmad, Shahrukhkhan Chavada, Wafa Refai, Rita Kothari, Devika Prasad, Faiza Ahmed Khan, Susan Sreemala, Nakul Singh Sawhney and Ashish Rajadhyaksha.

Thursday, 13 June 2024

• Screening:
Insides and Outsides (Arbab Ahmad, 2023, 54 min)

Welcome to the end of history. In an increasingly hostile environment of escalating violence, discrimination and disenfranchisement, Arbab explores what it is like being a Muslim in India. The film ebbs and flows between looking outside in his surroundings, where a constant stream of hate erupts and engulfs all sides, and inside, where Arbab’s parents back home renegotiate their sense of identity with a changing political reality.

• Arbab Ahmad, Performance lecture
‘There is something in the air and I can’t put a pin on it’

Arbab Ahmad writes: ‘Something in the air … is an attempt to expand upon the experience that I had making this film. It connects with convergent works by other Muslim filmmakers in India who have also responded to their disenfranchisement very personally. I find this akin to a film movement – that comes from a commonality in sharing pieces of themselves in their works to express a deep loss of their erasure from history.

• Arbab Ahmad in conversation with Ashish Rajadhyaksha

Arbab Ahmad is a Visual Designer and Filmmaker currently based in Delhi-NCR. He has been freelancing for 8 years, with collaborations ranging from fiction, documentary and writing about film. Insides and Outsides premiered at IDSFFK 2023 and won the best editing award, and later the best medium length documentary at Madurai International Documentary and Short Film Festival. It has been screened at special screenings at JNU, G5a Mumbai and India International Centre amongst other locations across India.

Friday, 14 June 2024

• Screening:
Kayo Kayo Colour (Shahrukhkhan Chavada, 2023, 96 min, black-and-white)

Set in Kalupur, a neighbourhood in the old city of Ahmedabad, India, this film follows the life of Razzak and his family. Everyday events open the family’s struggles, interpersonal conflicts and ways of life as they navigate through layers of social and political influence at a particular juncture in India’s recent political history. The family is caught off guard as an unexpected move threatens their fate and alters life as they know it.

• Talk:
Rita Kothari ‘Geographies of Segregation’

• Shahrukhkhan Chavada and Wafa Refai in conversation with Rita Kothari and Ashish Rajadhyaksha

Shahrukhkhan Chavada spent his formative years in the rural environs of Palanpur, North Gujarat. He studied media, animation and film making in Pune. He wrote and directed his debut feature film Kayo Kayo Colour, which premiered at IFF Rotterdam and has been screened at Melbourne IFF, Hawaii IFF, Jogja NETPAC AFF and MAMI Mumbai.

Wafa Refai, Producer, Editor and Sound Recordist of Kayo Kayo Colour co-founded La Pataa Films with Shahrukhkhan Chavada. She has completed a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Effects & Filmmaking from Pune.

Rita Kothari is Professor of English and the Head of the Department of English at Ashoka University. She is a scholar and translator working across literature, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and history. She has translated from Gujarati and Sindhi into English and occasionally vice versa. Her latest book Uneasy Translations: Self, Experience and Indian Literature, interweaves her personal journey as an academic into reflections around self, language, and translation.

Saturday, 15 June 2024

• Talk:
Devika Prasad, Ensuring A Record: Documenting the Violence in North East Delhi

• Talk:
Faiza Ahmad Khan & Susan Sreemala, Time Map-Archive of North East Delhi Violence 2020

The timemap serves as an archive of and an investigation into the violence in North-East Delhi in 2020, following protests against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act. The investigation proceeds along two levels: scraping social media websites and downloading user-generated content from the events of February 2020, followed by its presentation through the TimeMap – events marked in space and time. User-generated content is corroborated with news reports, other human rights investigations, and official reports.

• Nakul Singh Sawhney in conversation with Faiza Ahmad Khan and Susan Sreemala

Devika Prasad is an independent researcher in policing and human rights. She served on two fact-finding committees on the North East Delhi violence.

Faiza Ahmad Khan is a researcher and documentary filmmaker with an interest in community media and archival practices.

Susan Sreemala is a communications professional and researcher affiliated with the Sarai Programme-CSDS with an interest in the intersections of law and media.

Nakul Singh Sawhney is a documentary filmmaker. Some of his films include Izzatnagari ki Asabhya Betiyaan, Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai…, Savitri’s Sisters at Azadi Kooch among others. He is also the founder of ChalChitra Abhiyaan, a film and media collective based in West UP.